Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman, who has been described as America's

greatest inventor.

Childhood-

Thomas Edison was born, in 1847, in Milan, Ohio, and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. He was the
seventh and last child of Samuel Ogden Edison and Nancy Matthews.

Early Career-

Edison sell candies and newspapers on trains running from Port Huron to Detroit, and sell vegetables
because His Father's Business Was Not Running Well. He became a telegraph operator after he saved
three-year-old Jimmie MacKenzie from being struck by a runaway train. Jimmie's father, station agent J.
U. MacKenzie of Michigan, was so grateful that he trained Edison as a telegraph operator. Edison's first
telegraphy job away from Port Huron was at Stratford Junction, Ontario, on the Grand Trunk Railway.
He was held responsible for a near collision. He also studied qualitative analysis and conducted chemical
experiments on the train until he left the job. Edison moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where, as an
employee of Western Union, he worked the Associated Press bureau news wire. Edison requested the
night shift, which allowed him plenty of time to spend at his two favorite pastimes—reading and
experimenting. One night, he was working with a lead–acid battery when he spilled sulfuric acid onto
the floor. It ran onto his boss's desk below. The next morning Edison got fired.

His first patent was for the electric vote recorder, which was granted on June 1, 1869. Finding little
demand for the machine, Edison moved to New York City shortly thereafter. One of his mentors during
those early years was a fellow telegrapher and inventor named Franklin Leonard Pope, who allowed him
to live and work in the basement of his home, while Edison worked for Samuel Laws at the Gold
Indicator Company. Pope and Edison founded their own company in October 1869, working as electrical
engineers and inventors. Edison began developing a multiplex telegraphic system, which could send two
messages simultaneously, in 1874.

Edison's major innovation was the establishment of an industrial research lab in 1876. It was built
in Menlo Park, a part of Raritan Township in Middlesex County, New Jersey, with the funds from the
sale of Edison's quadruplex telegraph. After his demonstration of the telegraph, Edison was not sure
that his original plan to sell it for $4,000 to $5,000 was right, so he asked Western Union to make a bid.
He was surprised to hear them offer $10,000 ($221,400 in today's dollars.), which he gratefully
accepted. The quadruplex telegraph was Edison's first big financial success, and Menlo Park became the
first institution set up with the specific purpose of producing constant technological innovation and
improvement.

Edison began his career as an inventor in Newark, New Jersey, with the automatic repeater and his
other improved telegraphic devices, but the invention that first gained him wider notice was
the phonograph in 1877. This accomplishment was so unexpected by the public at large as to appear
almost magical. Edison became known as "The Wizard of Menlo Park," New Jersey. Despite its
limited sound quality and that the recordings could be played only a few times, the phonograph made
Edison a celebrity.

In 1876, Edison began work to improve the microphone for telephones by developing a carbon
microphone.

In 1878, Edison began working on a system of electrical illumination, something he hoped could
compete with gas and oil based lighting. He began by tackling the problem of creating a long-lasting
incandescent lamp, something that would be needed for indoor use. After many experiments, first
with carbonfilaments and then with platinum and other metals, Edison returned to a carbon filament.
This was the first commercially practical incandescent light. In 1878, Edison formed the Edison Electric
Light Company in New York City with several financiers, including J. P . Morgan and Spencer Trask.
Edison made the first public demonstration of his incandescent light bulb on December 31, 1879, in
Menlo Park. It was during this time that he said: "We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will
burn candles.

Edison designed and produced the first commercially available fluoroscope, a machine that uses X-
rays to take radiographs. The fundamental design of Edison's fluoroscope is still in use today.

Edison also invented a highly sensitive device, that he named the tasimeter, which measured infrared
radiation.

Marriage and Children-

On December 25, 1871, at the age of twenty-four, Edison marry 16-year-old Mary Stilwell, whom he had
met two months earlier; she was an employee at one of his shops. They had three children:

Marion Edison

Thomas Alva Edison Jr.

William Edison (1878–1937) Inventor, graduate of the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, 1900.

Mary Edison died at age 29 on August 9, 1884, from a brain tumor. On February 24, 1886, at the age of
thirty-nine, Edison married the 20-year-old Mina Miller in Akron, Ohio. She was the daughter of the
inventor Lewis Miller. They also had three children together:

Madeleine Edison

Charles Edison

Theodore Miller Edison

Death-
Edison died of complications of diabetes on October 18, 1931, in his home, "Glenmont" in New Jersey,
which he had purchased in 1886 as a wedding gift for Mina. Edison is buried behind the home.
Mina died in 1947.